It seems easy to get content on a website, right? Just press activate!
Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. This talk discusses the steps net-new content needs to go through to go live. By understanding the complete process, you can anticipate delays and plan accordingly.
This talk will help AEM Devs, Tech Leads, PMs and Architects or anyone else involved in project plan.
2. PERFICIENT DIGITAL
Dan Klco
• Certified AEM Architect
• 2017 AEM Rockstar
• Apache Sling PMC Member
• 30 Digital Marketing Projects
• Adobe Digital Marketing
Director at Perficient Digital
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3. PERFICIENT DIGITAL
•We forgot to add Analytics tracking for X, can we
add it during the code freeze?
•It’s pretty much impossible to implement this
design in AEM.
•Well, creative is done, so… we’re stuck with it.
•Our authors don’t understand how to author the
site.
•We need to adjust the designs to have a single H1
tag.
•Our DAM is just a mess...
Does this sound
familiar?
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Let’s be
Honest…
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SEO Content
AEM Dev
StrategyDesign
Analytics
We ALL know
who is the center
of the universe…
…Unfortunately, so
does everyone
else!
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Major Players
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Business Stakeholders
The Ivory Tower
of Strategy
• Enterprise Strategy
• Information Architecture
• Program Management
• Solution Architecture
The Content Mines
• Content Strategy
• Asset Creation
• Content Authoring
The Green Fields of
Design
• Research
• UX
• UI
• HTML Dev
The Fortress of
Technology
• WCM Dev
• DevOps
• Integrations
• Search
The Island of Digital
Marketing
• Accessibility
• CRO
• Analytics
• SEO
Business Stakeholders
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Outside Our Box
To succeed, we need to:
•Include teams at the right times
•Collaborate and compromise
•Be curious and engaged
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Healthy Tension?
There’s always limits:
• Time
• Budget
• People
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Ideal Case:
• Everyone wants to succeed
• Each team has a perspective
• Teams compromise to win
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Information Architecture & Taxonomy
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Process
• Define Goals
• Define Use Cases
• Develop Structure
• Define Metadata
Goals
• Organization
• Simplicity
• Ease of Use
Importance
• Defined content
structure
• Organization and
simplicity
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User Experience & Design
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Process
• Determine goals
• Understand the
environment
• Plan the interaction
• Validate & assess
• Document the plan
Goals
• Positive, emotional
connection
• Clarity and simplicity
for the end users
Importance
• Refines requirements
and functional specs
• Ensures an excellent
user experience
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SEO & Digital Marketing
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Process
• Determine goals
• Understand the
environment
• Create measurement
/ optimization plan
• Validate & assess
Goals
• Optimize experience
• Mitigate loss from
changes
Importance
• Measures success of
program
• Ongoing
improvements
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Content Strategy
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Process
• Brand / consumer
definition
• Goal / need definition
• Scope & content
inventory
• Authoring & migration
Goals
• Advocate for the
consumer
• Create content the
consumer is looking
for
Importance
• Supports
requirements
definition
• Focuses messaging
externally vs
internally
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Signs of Unhealthy
Tension
• Failure to achieve goals
• Lack of compromise
• Lack of communication
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Start Off Right
•Ensure all teams are involved
•Develop a RACI
•Develop a plan up front
•Keep the plan up to date
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Before we begin, a big thank you to Adobe for hosting us at their incredible office, thanks as well to Carlos and Amit from Artyllect for coordinating this meetup and thanks to all of you for taking the time to join me here and your support in sharing knowledge and supporting the Global Adobe Community!
This presentation is close to my heart, as it is born out of my experiences over the last near decade of consulting in Digital Marketing and a large number of lessons I learned on the way.
As a real quick introduction, my name is Dan Klco, and yes, it is spelled K-L-C-O and it's Slovak. I've been working with AEM since back in the Day days and I'm AEM Architect, 2017 AEM Rockstar and Apache Sling PMC member.
This talk is based on my experience on over 30 digital marketing projects, including several at Perficient/Digital, the most recent of which will be going live this Saturday!
I'm sure you've all heard something to the effect of these quotes:
We forgot to add analytics tracking for X, can we add it during the code freeze?
It’s pretty much impossible to implement this design in AEM… this one is especially when some little tweak would make it 100x easier, but the business has already bought into the original design.
Well, creative is done… so we’re stuck with it.
Our authors don’t understand how to author the site… even the best CMS can still be hard to use if your implementation is overly complex.
We need to adjust designs to have a single H1 tag… I love late changes like this from SEO.
Finally Our DAM is just a mess, especially when you hear this is the third DAM, each of which is mysteriously a mess
Why do projects keep ending up with these sort of hiccups?
Well, I think we're all familiar with what I call the, Salesperson Project Plan.
First, easy content authoring, because well you're using AEM. Fair enough! It really is a great tool for creating content.
Combine that with it "Works out of the box”.. Which has to be my #2 least favorite phrase
And BAM!! you'll have your website tomorrow!
This is of course tongue and cheek, but even as technologists, we often underestimate the effort required to deliver Digital Marketing solutions, even if you are using market leading technology.
By oversimplifying the effort and not thinking ahead, we’re contributing to the issues that come back and cause trouble down the road.
So why is it so hard to launch a website? I'm not referring to the work we do as developers or the time to create content, but why do we keep hitting unexpected snags, delays and complications.
First, we miss processes or even whole teams. This can be anything from not planning for an Analytics Audit to not consulting with SEO.
Next, there can be a lack of healthy tension. We’ll talk a bit more about what is healthy and unhealthy tension later in this talk, but without a healthy tension the whole project gets out of whack.
Finally, we just fail to anticipate timelines. How often have you thought or been told something will “just be easy” and then having to scramble at the end of a project to get it in place. I’ve worked with colleagues across a number of diciplines to figure out and document what’s a “reasonable” timeframe and what a comprehensive project plan might look like.
So if we’re missing someone, who is it?
Let’s be honest, we all know AEM development is the center of the universe
Unfortunately, everyone else thinks the same way.
If we’re not getting outside our bubble, it’s easy to miss all of the other teams, process and roles which are absolutely critical to a successful project delivery.
So who are these mysterious players in a digital marketing program?
First we’ve got the business stakeholders. They are at the center of all of this as their contributions and their approval will determine the success of the project. If the business is not engaged or satisfied it’s going to be difficult to succeed.
High atop the Ivory Tower of Strategy sits architects like myself. As well as program managers, taxonomists and solution architects. We help design the solution and should be involved in the implementation to ensure the program is implemented according to the principals of the design and best practices.
Off in the green fields of the design we have our researchers who use qualitative and quntitavie analysis to determine user needs and goals, UI and UX designer, who convert these findings into wireframes and high fideltiy comps and HTML Devs or Front end Devs who convert designs into the mockup which we’ll implement in AEM.
Deep in the content mines content strategists define the voice of the brand, define the strategy for presenting the content, author the content and create the assets for the site.
Off on the island of digital marketing SEO / Analytics and CRO strategists devise plans and strategies to track, optimize and improve visitor experiences, whether human or computer.
Finally, in the fortress of technology we’ve got the developers, infrastructure folks, integrators and all of the technologists who are implementing the digital marketing platform.]
So what can we take from all this? If one of these groups isn’t consulted on your project you’re missing a needed perspective!
How do we ensure all of the need roles are inclded? We need to think outsdide the box of AEM dev.
This includes inviting the required teams. Sometimes It’s just as simple as asking.
We need to work collaboratively and compromise. If we’re inviting others, but not collaborating or compromising, we can’t expect others to be engaged.
Finally, we need to be curious and engaged. More often than not other team members would be glad to be asked a question, so just reach out! It’s better to potentially feel silly than miss some major requirement!
I want to clear the air on one of my pet peeves. Some people when they are trying to be “collaborative” decide to just invite everyone to every meeting.
So do you need 20 people for every meeting? Heck NO!
Just include the right people and include them at the right times. If a team isn’t going to be involved in a discussion and you’re just “keeping them informed” a shorter summary call or written summary would probably suffice vs a several hou
Healthy tension? It sounds like a misnomer, but it is an important feature for projects to be successful. Like a suspension bridge, healthy tension supports the project, where too much or too little tension will tear it apart or allow it to collapse in on itself.
What is healthy tension?
We’ve need to keep in mind, there’s always going to be limits. Whether it’s time, budget people or all of the above, we’ll never have everything we want to pull off a project.
In the ideal case, where you have healthy tension:
Everyone wants to succeed – this is important, having team members who care more about individual success than the whole or are sabotaging the effort, quickly causes unhealthy tension
Every team comes with a different perspective of success, each driven by their priorities history and roles.
In order to win with limited resources, teams compromise for a “good alternative” for the overall project to win
TO understand how to make healthy tension work, it’s important to understand how the different teams operate and how they view success.
Information Architecture and Taxonomy are two related processes.
The process for each starts with goal definition and use cases. From there, the Information Architect and Taxonomist will then define the structure and metadata for the content and data.
The goals of IA and taxonomy is organization, simplicity and easy of use. Information architects work to create an excellent taxonomy which is:
Easy to teach
Easy to use
Easy to understand
Without having an up front information architecture, you will have to define the content / data structure on the fly which can lead to a sub-optimal structure. Additionally, when developing an IA, architects will often reduce the overall amount of content to reduce duplication, which is never a bad thing.
Additionally, as technologists, we’re generally more comfortable with complexity than the average user. Having a taxonomist or information architect will lead to a simpler and more organized content structure. Which as Martha Stewart says, is a good thing.
User Experience and design also starts with defining goal definition and the understanding environment. This can be anything from the brand, the competitive environment, consumer behavior and historical information.
From there, they plan the interaction and validate and assess the plan. Finally, they document the interaction plan. This is the wireframes and comps we're all used to. I sat down with one of our designers to understand the process and this was a revelation to me. I’d always thought that the end goal of the design was the wireframes and comps, but really these are just documentation of the interaction.
The goals of UX / UI design is to create a positive, emotional connection and create clarity and simplicity for end users.
Without design, well, obviously we can’t work. But a good design will refine the requirements and give you a package of functional specs. If we shortcut on the design or don’t consult design, well, we may not get a good user experience.
How do you recognize unhealthy tension? First, failure.. This doesn’t mean that an entire program fails, but that the program is seen as a failure by some parts of the team.
Next a lack of compromise
This can lead to a complete breakdown of communication as teams are no longer able to work togeher productively.
How do you avoid unhealthy tension? Start off right by:
Ensuring all teams are involved
Develop a RACI. I have mixed feelings about RACIs, on the one hand it’s such an old school sounding document, but having a clear understanding of responsibilities really helps ensure everyone is on the same epage.
Develop a plan up front…, I’m not advocating from waterfall, but you need to have so idea of how the project should run and how the different teams and roles will work together.
Finally, a plan is only useful if it’s kept up to date. This should be your bible and should be referenced regularly to ensure the team is still tracking to the plan.
So why can’t I just write code?
First, let’s be selfish – AEM dev is late in the process and we usually end up holding the bag for misses and delays.
Were also all in it together, so no matter where the problem occurs, the site launches or it doesn’t
Let’s walk throught the ptocess.. enumerate
When it comes to planning, it’s important to consider your prerequisites.
Before discovery begins you should have the RACI, a high level scope and stakeholders identified. This doesn’t mean your scope needs to be set in stone, but you should know if you are building a house or a car.
Before beginning design, you should have the style guide and a finalized information architecture and an initial solution design.
Before your implementation, you should have the designs and content strategy. You should also have an analytics SCR and digital marketing standards defined.
Finally, before going live you need to have complete all the testing and audits including UAT, performance, security, content, analytics and SEO
So here’s some high level times we should consider as we create project plans. These aren’t set in stone, but they are a starting point.
Here’s a sample project plan based on a fairly standard timeline. There are a couple things to note:
- The importance of delivering design up front
- Some teams such as digital marketing and content need to be heavily involved through several parts of the project
- Architecture and design teams should provide support through the course of the project
As takeaways:
It’s not easy to successfully launch a digital marketing platform, but you can help by:
Collaborating outside the box of AEM development
Keeping a healthy tension on your project
And planning ahead with all parties included
Thanks again for taking the time to come out. Do we have any questions?
